[MUSIC PLAYING] The Bible from 30,000 feet,
soaring through the scripture from Genesis to Revelation. Turned in your Bible,
turned in the book of books to the first book,
the book of Genesis, where we are going to look
at the first 11 chapters in this first flight. We're about to embark on
a very special journey, a fast-paced journey
through the Bible. Each flight begins
each week at 6:30 PM. The flight is about an hour. And you're going to see
things that are familiar. But hopefully, you're going to
see some things you have never seen before. Now, the Bible is
worth reading slowly, which is what we usually
do in our devotional time. Even in our normal and midweek
Bible study or our Sunday morning approach, we go slower. And I've been known to go
very slow in my teaching. I've done a whole sermon
on not just a sentence, not just a phrase, but
just a single word. One time I even did one on
a comma between two words. And there is value
in going slow. But there's also value
in an approach like this where you speed it
up and you cover vast portions of scripture. It gives to us the big picture. And sometimes we can miss
the forest for the trees. We need to see how the
plan all fits together. And this unique approach
will do just that. So we're going to
cover a lot of ground. We're going to move quickly. We're not going to be
able to read every verse. We're going to be
looking at the landmarks. Just like a pilot will
often say to those who were aboard
his or her flight, if you look to your right,
you'll see the Grand Canyon. Later on if you
look to your left, you'll see the St. Louis
Arch over the Mississippi. We're going to show
you the major landmarks in this scripture and show
how it all fits together. Now, on a horizontal
level, there are two sources of knowledge-- reason and experience. That's how most people get
their knowledge-- reason and experience. We experience things. And therefore, we
draw conclusions. Or we reason things out based on
others' observations or others' experiences. Those are the two basic
sources of knowledge, reason and experience. However, those two sources
are limited sources. There's a lot of things
that are left unanswered like where did I come from? Where am I going? What is the purpose
and meaning of life? How did I get here? Therefore, you need
a third source. Not just a horizontal source,
reason and experience, but a vertical source. And that is Revelation. Someone from outside the
time and space continuum needs to communicate to
you and tell you what's up. You'll never answer those
questions without it. And so we have Revelation,
God's Revelation. And Revelation can even be
divided into two groups. There is a natural Revelation. There is special Revelation. Or if you prefer general
Revelation as opposed to special Revelation. What is general Revelation? Things like creation,
the universe. As you go out and you observe
the stars, the sky, the moon, the sun, the
intricacies of biology. The Bible says, "the heavens
declare the glory of God." The firmament shows
his handiwork. But then there is
special Revelation. And that is the Bible. And that is what we're studying
in this year study called the Bible from 30,000 feet. Now, in this book, this Bible,
there are 66 separate books-- some long, some very long,
some very, very short-- 66 entries all together
or 31,173 verses. Sounds like a big book. It is. If you were to read it from
cover to cover out loud, like if you were to
stand in your room and just start
reading it aloud, it would take you about
70 hours straight to read from Genesis
to Revelation. If you were to break
that up though, you could cover it in 12
minutes a day in a single year. So it's worth doing. It's worth reading
through the Bible. And we're going to be
doing that, as I said, not every verse. But we're going to
look at the highlights. Now, the Bible does something. It sweeps throughout history. And it goes from eternity
past to the future, the eternal state. It covers all the way back
from primeval early history all the way to ultimate prophecy
in the Book of Revelation. But all of the Bible, if
you wanted to sum it up, you could say this. All of the scripture,
all 66 books, all of special Revelation points
to one person and two events. One person and two events. Now, you have the
Bible in a nutshell. That's the irreducible minimum. You can't get any tighter
or any smaller than that. The one person, the hero of the
Bible, you know who that is. It's Jesus Christ. The two events-- His first coming,
His second coming. His first coming, He
comes to deal with sin. His second coming, He comes
to reign with those who have been cleansed from sin. That is the whole Bible-- one person, two events. Genesis is the foundation. It's the ground floor. If we don't understand
the book of Genesis, we won't understand what
follows the book of Genesis. It is all about origins. That's what Genesis means. The Hebrew title is
Bereshit, in the beginning. Our title is Genesis. It means the origin. And we get in this book the
origin of, well, everything. The origin of the
Heaven and the Earth. We get the origin of
man, the origin of sin, the origin of God's
plan to deal with sin, the origin of marriage,
the origin of the family, the origin of human
government, the origin of the nation of Israel. Everything is covered in terms
of its origin in this book. Now, we're going to look at,
tonight, the first 11 chapters. And then next time, we're going
to finish the book of Genesis and go on in the next week
into the Book of Exodus. But the first 11 chapters
are about events. The second part of the book of
Genesis, chapters 12 through 50 highlights people. We're going to look at events. And the four events that you've
seen just in the introduction video are the formation
followed by the fall followed by the flood followed
by the fallout. I'll briefly explain it. Chapters 1 and 2, the formation
of the Heavens and the Earth. The universe is formed by God. And it's explained
briefly in two chapters. Then we have, in
chapters 3, 4, and 5, the fall of Man,
Adam and Eve's sin in the garden and the
repercussions that follow. Then we have the flood
in chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9-- a universal
judgment where waters covered
the Earth followed by the fallout of
man's rebellion in chapters 10 and 11. So let's begin at the
beginning with the formation of the universe. We're going to look at the
first verse of the Bible. And we're going to kind of pick
this out singularly and then move on through the rest. Let me just say as I've
said so often before. If you can accept Genesis
1:1, everything after that gets really simple. "In the beginning, God created
the Heavens and the Earth." That's a good trick. That's a lot of power. That's an incredible feat. If that can happen, then every
single other miraculous event is now possible. So if you can get
past that first verse, get through that first verse,
understand it, in part, and embrace it, you'll be good. So look at it. "In the beginning, God created
the Heavens and the Earth." It's so simple, so
straightforward. And it happens to
be very precise. Back in 1903, an
unbeliever, a scientist by the name of
Herbert Spencer argued that all things in the universe,
everything in the universe, can be fit into one
of five categories. Now, listen to what he said. The five categories are time,
force, action, space, matter. Everything could be fit into
one of those categories-- time, force, action, space, matter. What he did not know is that
God beat him to the punch. Because when he
said that statement, he just said Genesis 1:1. Look at it again. "In the beginning--"
that's time. "God--" that's force. "Created--" that's action. "The Heavens--" that's space. "And the Earth--" that's matter. "In the beginning, God created
the Heavens and the Earth," in a precise,
succinct statement. "The Earth," verse 2, "is
without form and void. Darkness was on the
face of the deep. And the spirit of
God was hovering over the face of the waters." So now, we understand that
God involved His Holy Spirit in His creation. As we keep reading
through the Bible, we're going to understand
that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
were all involved. Not only is the Spirit
hovering over the waters. But John chapter 1
will tell us that Jesus was before all things and
that He created all things. It'll also be repeated
in Colossians chapter 1. "He is before all things. And by Him, all things consist." John 1:1, "in the
beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. All things were
made through Him. And there was not anything
that is made or that was made, except by Him." Then verse 3, God said,
"let there be light. And there was light." And God saw the light,
that it was good. And God divided the
light from the darkness. God called the light, day, and
the darkness he called, night. So the evening and the
morning were the first day. Now, we have, in the
verses that follow, the six days of creation. On day 1, the light comes on. Day 2, the hydrological
cycle begins as waters on the surface pool
and waters above the firmament or the expanse of heaven exist. On day 4, the celestial
bodies are formed. On day 5, the
animals are formed. And so God basically
decorated His creation. He created it. Then He decorated it. Now, He populates it. On day 6, He
creates us, mankind. Verse 26, "then God said, let
Us make man in our image." Isn't that an interesting
way to put it. God said, let Us-- the Father, the Son, the
Spirit, the Triune God in communication
with each other. According to our likeness. Let them have dominion
over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and
over the cattle over all the Earth over every creeping
thing that creeps on the Earth. So God created man
in His own image. In the image of God, He
created Him male and female. He created Them. Then in chapter 2, verse
1, when God was all done, it has this unusual term. God rested. God rested. That becomes the very
basis for a commandment Israel will follow the
day of rest, the Sabbath. God created the
world in six days. On the seventh day, He rested. Why did he rest? Was he tired? No. He was done. When he rested, it's not like--
don't picture God, oh, man. That was tough getting
those animals out. Like that rhinoceros--
that was tough. No. He was done. And so He ended it. He ceased. Or He rested from it. There is a word. It's found in verse 1 that
happens to be a stumbling block for a lot of people. That's why, I said, if
you can get past verse 1, you'll be fine. And that is the word, created. Boy, when you say,
God created, there's an awful lot of people
in this world who hate the idea, this
naive idea, that there is a super being out there
named God who created things. Because most people believe
that, in our culture, evolution is a done deal. Nobody believes in
creation anymore. The only problem is
it's not a done deal in the scientific community. There's an awful lot of
biologists, biochemists, and others who object to the
standard theory of evolution. One molecular biologist by
the name of Michael Denton, whom I greatly admire his works,
said, the evolutionary theory is still, as it was in Darwin's
time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without
direct factual support. Did you know that, when
Charles Darwin came up with his theory of evolution, he
knew that there was one glaring lack of evidence in one area. And that was the fossil record. He couldn't find any
evidence in the fossil record of transitional forms. He could find plenty of
transmutational forms but no transitional forms. It was absent. But he believed
that, over time, he would be vindicated,
that enough science would go by that would vindicate
his theory of evolution. But what has happened
is exactly the opposite. David Roth, the curator of the
Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, wrote this. "We are now about 120
years after Darwin. And the knowledge
of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of
a million fossil species. But the situation
hasn't changed much. We have fewer examples of
evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time." So a growing group
of these scientists are looking at
evolution saying, this is a ridiculous idea to
think that no one plus nothing equals everything. That somehow just
lacks common sense. Because no matter how far back
you go, however infinitely you regress, you've got to do
something about all that gas-- where did it come from? And all that space-- where did it come from? As you came in the
church building tonight, if you came from
the east parking lot, you passed our courtyard. And in our courtyard is
a baptismal fountain-- a water feature as a waterfall. But it's also used as a baptism. We can fill it up. We can warm it up to
like 90, even 100 degrees if we wanted to and make
it kind of like a Jacuzzi. We fill it up. We baptize people. And then we bring it
back down for the rest of the week as a water feature. So as you go by, I don't know
if you've ever thought this. But I thought this
from the beginning. This thing's cool. And it's designed really well. And because it's
designed, obviously, there must be behind it a designer. But if I were to say, you know
really how that came about? It was really freaky. But one day, it just appeared. And I figured
that, over millions of years, gases and energy
and rocks and steel collided. And eventually, it just
formed itself in this fashion. You would say, you're a nut. And you would be correct. I would be a nut. Because something that is
as intricate as that demands design. Like your home. When you go home, you
can look at your house. And it shows a builder did this. An architect formed plans. And a builder
followed those plans. Design shows a designer. That, by the way, is called
the teleological argument for the existence
of God, that there is a designer behind
the intricacies of the designed world. "He created them," it says
at the end of verse 27. In Genesis chapter
2 verse 4, "this is the history of the
Heavens and the Earth." There's this word again, "when
they were created in the day that the Lord, God, made
the Earth and the Heavens." A couple of days ago, many
of the pastors and myself were camping outside for a
couple of days in northern New Mexico by the San Juan River. And at night, far
from the city, you can look up and see
the panoply of stars like diamonds spread
across black velvet. They just pop. They're brilliant--
the planets, the stars. And when you see
the universe like it says in the book of
Psalms, "the Heavens declare the glory of God." The firmament shows
his handiwork. "Day into day, they
utter their speech. Night after night,
they reveal knowledge." You really get that when
you look in that perspective out in the tulies
at the heavens. To say, well, it's
just a weird accident. It's a cosmic accident. It just so happens that the
Sun is 93 million miles away from the Earth and has a surface
temperature of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Really? It just so happened? If we were as close, say, as
Venus, our surface temperature would be 860 degrees Fahrenheit. You'd think it was
hot here today? Imagine 860 degrees Fahrenheit. If you moved far back
like to the orbit of Mars, you would have minus
195 degrees Celsius. That's cold. In either extreme, life as
we know it could not survive. But we are right
here in that spot. Or if you were to
say, well, it just so happens that the
Earth is rotating 365 orbits around the Sun-- why not 30? What if our days
were that long so it took 30 orbits like
some of the planets are very slow in their rotation. Well, the day would
be 10 times longer. The night would be
10 times longer. And there would be alternate
events of freezing and heating. Life could not be sustained. If you say, well,
it just so happened that the Earth is tilted 23
and 1/3 degrees on its axis giving us the beautiful
array of four seasons. Or it just so happened
that the atmosphere is this unusual balance
of 78 parts nitrogen to 21 parts of oxygen
with 1% of varying gases. It's weird how it
just so happened. And it just so happened that
the amount of water to land is the ratio that it is, which
gives us the rainfall that we have on the Earth. Did you know that
if the oceans were just one quarter
larger than they are, we would have a
flood on the Earth. It would be eight times
the amount of rainfall. Life couldn't be sustained. If they were just a little
shallower than they are, it would be dry
all over the Earth. And we know it's dry here. It would be dry everywhere,
and life couldn't be sustained. So it didn't just so happened. It was just so
designed by a designer. And the Lord God made
the Earth and the Heaven. So when you go outside-- and maybe you'll see
a star or two tonight. We have light
pollution around here. And you look up and you see a
couple of stars or a planet, think this. If the art hanging in the
skies must be that magnificent, how magnificent is
the artist behind it? That's the God of the Bible. In Genesis 2, in verse 8, "the
Lord, God, planted a garden." I love that God was a Gardener. "Where eastward in Eden. And there, He put the
man whom He had formed." Now, we don't exactly
know where this is. Probably was in the Mesopotamian
river valley, the river delta, between the Tigris
and Euphrates River. Of course, the Earth
was very different. But that would make it around
Iraq somewhere, that delta. Verse 9, "out of the
ground, the Lord, God, made every tree grow that
is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also
in the midst of the garden and the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil." Go down to verse 15. "Then the Lord,
God, took the man and put him in the Garden of
Eden to tend it and to keep it. And the Lord, God,
commanded the man saying, 'of every tree of the
garden, you may freely eat.'" Please notice that. We always notice, you
can't eat that one tree. And we kind of get bummed
out at God for making a rule. You can eat everything
in this garden. You may freely eat it. "But of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in
the day that you eat of it, you will surely die." Now, we're going to
see this in chapter 5 more than any other
chapter in this early part. Because it will be a list
of all the people who die. It will say eight times, and
he died and he died and he died and he died. "And the day that you
eat, you will surely die." Go down to verse 19. "Out of the ground,
the Lord, God, formed every beast of the
field, every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to
see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called
each living creature, that was its name." Adam is a name. It's actually a Hebrew word. And it simply means, man. That's how we translate Adam-- man. But the word, Adam, comes
from another Hebrew word, adamah, which means,
dirt or soil, red soil. They even use adamah for,
red, in the Hebrew language to this day and probably because
the nutrient-rich red soil of a garden of Eden
is where God took him. So if you look at verse
19, that's Adam's life. What a great job. Living in the Garden of Eden? And his job was naming animals. This is a hippie's dream. Hey, this is what people save
their whole life for and look to retire after. This is what they
want to do, just hang around in a garden
environment with a bunch animals. Come on. That's living. So he's naming animals. And I always like to
imagine that, at first, he was very creative and
diligent and came up with these weird things
like, Hippopotamus. That's like five syllables. Man, that's long. Or rhinoceros. And then he got a
little tireder-- elephant. And then it's the
end of the day. And he says, like, dog. Cat. Pig. Fly. He had not much energy. Of course, these
are English names. Chapter 2 verse 18,
go back one verse. "The Lord, God, said, 'it is not
good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper
comparable to him." Verse 21, "the Lord, God, caused
the deep sleep to fall on Adam. And he slept. And he took one of
his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib," or
the side, literally, "which the Lord, God, had taken
from man, he made into a woman. And he brought her to the man." There was this
Sunday school class where the teacher was
telling this story, the story of creation, the story
of the first man and woman. There was one little
boy who was just so interested in Adam and Eve
and how this process worked. He'd never heard
anything like this. God took a rib and made a woman. And it was his wife. And it was just so weird to him. But he's listening. And he was wrapped in attention. Later on that week, little
Johnny had a stomach ache and was lying on his bed. And as mom came in the room,
and said, Johnny, what's wrong? And he was holding his side. And he goes, I think
I'm having a wife. It's what a kid would
think looking at the story. "And Adam said," verse 23,
"this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called,
woman, because she was taken out of man." Now, that doesn't sound
all that romantic. The girl shows up. And this is now bone of my
bones and flesh of my flesh. Really? That's all you got? But that's because
our translation really doesn't capture the feel
and flavor of the original. So the Living Bible tried
to do that and said, and God brought the
woman to the man. And Adam said, this is it. And I like that translation. This is it. Yeah, bone of my bones,
flesh of my flesh. But this is the one. This is the helper. This is the match. This is the one. It was from God, and he knew it. "Therefore," verse
24, "a man will leave his father and mother
and be joined to his wife. And they shall
become one flesh." Now, we've noticed
something repeated. If you were to read every
single verse of these chapters, you would find out that
time and time again, God says, after he makes
something, it was good. It was good. Chapter 1, verse 4, verse 10,
verse 12, verse 18, verse 21, verse 25, God says, it's good. And then in chapter 1 verse
31, "then God saw everything that He had made. And indeed, it was very good." Now, for the first
time in all the Bible, God says, something is not good. He looks at the dude. He looks him over and goes,
something's not right. Something is not
good about this. And what it was was the state
of aloneness that he was in. It is not good that
man should be alone. So God says, I'm going
to make him a helper. Now, speaking of
unromantic things to say, this would be high on the list. Well, who's this? Oh, this is my helper. Try that sometime, man,
and watch her reaction. Oh, really, that's what I am? Your helper? It doesn't sound impressive. It sort of sounds like,
she's my assistant. However, did you know
that it is a word God used to describe Himself. In Psalm 46, "God is our
refuge and our strength, a very present help." Same exact Hebrew word. "A present help in
times of trouble." Also Psalm 33, "God is
our help and our shield." So God knew that this guy
needed all the help he can get. So He made her. And He brought them together. God was the first
matchmaker you might say. And we would be
right to say, this was a match made in Heaven. God brought them together. In fact, somebody once
said, Adam and Eve had the ideal set up. He didn't have to hear about all
the men she could have married. And she didn't have
to hear about the way his mother cooked. So you know, it
was just perfect. So that is the formation,
chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis. God does not go
into great detail. But he covers the formation. Now, we come to
chapter 3 through 5. And this is the
Second Great event that Genesis speaks about. And that is the fall of man. Genesis speaks about four great
events and four great people. The four great people
we'll look at next time. But now, we come to the fall
of man, chapters 3 through 5. And chapter 3 gives to us the
only reasonable explanation that the world is as
bad off as it is today. Every generation
looks around and says, man, this world is
so bad these days. I hear that every "set of days." The next generation, man, the
world is so bad these days. The next generation-- these
days, not like it used to be. So just everybody acknowledges
life is pretty bad. Where did it all start? The explanation is here. Verse 1, "now, the
serpent was more cunning than any beast
of the field, which the Lord God had made. And he said to the
woman, has indeed God said you shall not eat of
every tree of the garden?" Now, right off the bat, we
are struck with the fact that this creature,
whatever it is, is markedly different
from other creatures. Because this creature can
talk and can understand human language and can
dialogue with the first man the first woman. So we understand that man is
given one negative command. We saw that. He can to the trees
of the garden. But this one tree,
you can't eat of. So he's given one
negative command. Who knows. God may have even hung a
sign over that one tree. It says, danger. Lethal tree. Keep out. But what do you think when you
see a sign that says, keep out? Go in. Keep out? That's for other people, not me. If it says wet paint,
what are you going to do? You're going to touch it. And that's what happens. Now, the word, serpent,
is not the best word. Because the Hebrew word that
is uses is the word, nachash. Nachash, means to shine. Or the shining one said. That's the literal translation. So this being, this serpent,
would be best translated, a shining one. Which immediately, if
you're a Bible student, takes you to the New Testament,
Book of Second Corinthians chapter 11 verse
14 where Paul said, "You have false apostles among
You who transform themselves into apostles of Christ. And we shouldn't Marvel at this. "For Satan himself
transforms himself into an angel of light." He appears here as
an angel of light. He didn't come with horns,
a little tight red suit, a little pitchfork going
up to people going, boo! He comes as an angel of
light, a shining one. In fact, there are two
Old Testament passages that describe Satan
in the beginning and his subsequent fall-- Isaiah chapter 14 and
Ezekiel chapter 28. In Ezekiel chapter 28,
it says of this being, "you were in Eden,
the garden of God. You were the seal of
perfection, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty." Now, this being,
this shining one, comes and immediately, as we
saw in verse 1 of chapter 3, challenges God, challenges God's
Word, challenges God's motives. And right here
begins the beginning of what we call in the New
Testament, "the world." You've heard that
term, "the world." The world, the flesh, the devil. The world is a New
Testament word. And the world is a system of
ideas, actions, and people that are opposed to God. And it begins here as something
is planted in the heart of Eve by the serpent. Verse 2, "the woman
said to the serpent, 'we may eat the fruit of the
trees of the garden.'" You said, we can't eat. We may eat. "'But of the fruit of the
tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has
said, you shall not eat. Nor shall you touch
it, lest you die.' Then the serpent
said to the woman, 'you will not surely
die for God knows that, in the days that you
eat, your eyes will be opened. And you will be like God
knowing good and evil.' So when the woman saw that
the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant
to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make
one wise, she took its fruit and ate it. She also gave to her
husband with her. And he ate." Now, notice
something in verse 6. "It was good for food. It was pleasant to the eyes. It was desirable
to make one wise." First John chapter 2, "for
all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh,
the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life
are not of the Father but they're of the world." We see them displayed
in this verse. Now, you'll notice something
also in verse 6, four verbs that Eve engages in. She saw. She took. She ate. She gave. For Adam, there's one. He ate. He's a guy. He ate. Now, what you should know,
what you need to know, is though that is true,
Adam gets all the blame. Paul, the Apostle, writes,
First Timothy chapter 2, "Adam was not deceived. But the woman being deceived
fell into transgression." So you just got to picture
Eve over there in the garden. She's just sort of listening
and talking and maybe feeling empathy
for this creature even though it's
a shiny creature. And she listened some more. And she engages more
in conversation. And she thinks about it. Adam? He knew exactly
what was going on. He just ate. It's like, ugh, grunt, mm, eat! Me Tarzan! But he knew what he was doing. All that aside, though,
this is the darkest day in human history. This is where all
the problems began. On this day, the virus,
called S-I-N virus, was introduced to the
bloodstream of humanity. You are all S-I-N positive. Every single human being-- that
beautiful baby that was just born, your little child,
your little niece or nephew-- S-I-N positive like all you all. And so Paul puts it this way in
Romans chapter 5, "by one man, sin entered the world. And death through sin
and death spread to all." And then finally,
Paul writes, "death rained from Adam to Moses." Sin entered. Death entered. Death spread. Death rained. It all started here. When Adam sinned, a
constitutional change was generated in
human character so that, from Adam all the way
down to every other generation, they would be impacted. He went from innocence
to sinfulness. That was the constitutional
change in his character. So Adam acted sort of like the
federal head of all humans who would ever be born. And by his act, sin and death
spread and entered the world. It's sort of like
what happened-- and I told this story to
you on a few occasions. As a kid, I went to the
Grand Teton's National Park with my parents. And I was at the base of that
beautiful lake, Jackson Lake. Early in the morning, a summer
morning, it was pristine. And you could see the reflection
of the mountains about as clear as you could see the mountains
themselves in the horizon. But just one stone that I
threw across that lake to see how many skips that stone
would make across that lake, just the first hit,
the first impact caused ripples that marred the
image of the beautiful Grand Tetons in Jackson Lake, Wyoming. What I did as a kid, Adam did
for the world, for the race. He threw the stone
of disobedience that has ripple effects
in every single generation and distorted the image of
God that we were created in. And that answers
the question, why the world is, after
thousands of years, the way it is and
seemingly getting worse. Now, in chapter 4, we
come to the first home, the first nuclear family. We have Adam and Eve and
their two boys, Cain and Abel. Both are worshipping together. Abel's offering is accepted. Cain's is not. Verse 3, "and in the
process of time," literally, and at the end of
days, "it came to pass that Cain brought an offering
of the fruit of the ground to the Lord." So it seems like
there was an appointed place and an appointed
time for them to worship. So worship was already being
organized back in Genesis. Verse 4, "Abel also
brought of the first born of his flock and their fat. And the Lord respected
Abel and his offering. But He did not respect
Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry. And his countenance fell." You know what that
means, that sad face. You know, the emoji. His countenance fell. It went from to bummed out. His countenance fell. A couple of the things
are at play here. First of all, the
quality of the offering. It is mentioned here. It says that he
brought the first born of his flock and their fat. A better translation is
he brought the first ones and the fattest ones. In other words, he
brought the very best. I'm going to bring the first
ones, which also happened to be the biggest, fattest ones. I'm giving those to the Lord. I'm not keeping
those for myself. So we understand
that worship, giving, should involve at least
some amount of sacrifice. David, when he was offering
something to the Lord, he offered to buy the
threshing floor of Ornan. We'll get to that much later on. And Ornan said, no, no, no. Let me give this to you. You're going to build
a temple for God? Man, it's on me. It's yours. Have it. He goes, no, no, no. I'm going to pay for it. No, David. You can have it. It's for God. David said, listen. I'm not going to give to
the Lord anything that doesn't cost me something. I've got a feeling. It has to be some
amount of sacrifice. So it was in this one. There was a quality
to his offer. Second, there was the
character behind the offer. If we wonder why did God
accept one and not the other, Hebrews 11 gives you the answer. "By faith, Abel offered up a
more acceptable or excellent sacrifice than Cain." And if you look at verse
7, there's a hint of that. In verse 7, God says, why
are you so bummed out? "If you do well, will
you not be accepted? And if you don't do well, then
sin is lying at the door." In other words,
you're not doing well. You're not living right. And I, God, will never
separate the offering from the one who offers it. You can worship me. But I always look
at the worshiper along with the worship itself. I don't just say, man,
that guy can sing. Ooh, he's got his hands raised. And it's so loud. And he's into it. I look at the life behind him. So both of those are at play,
the quality of the offering and the character
behind the offering. So he was angry. Cain was so angry that
his countenance fell and he kills Abel. It is now the, what you
would call, first murder. I'm calling it the
second murder in history. Technically, it's the first
homicide, a man killing a man. But I contend it's
the second murder. The first is when Satan
destroyed the relationship of intimacy that God had with
his ultimate creation, man and woman. That was the first murder. Satan, the Bible says, was a
murderer from the beginning. So he murdered
that relationship. And Cain killing his brother
marks the second murder. So Cain killed Abel. And Cain wasn't able
to hang out anymore. He's banished and kicked out. And so verse 25 picks
up the line of Seth. When we get to chapter
5, the whole chapter is the line of Seth, the third
child born to Adam and Eve-- Cain, Abel, and now, Seth. So it's the
genealogy, chapter 5, of Adam through Seth to Noah. And just glance
over the chapter. Just look at some of
the names in there. When you look at
Chapter 5, it looks like a bunch of boring
names stacked one on top of the other. Verse 1, "this is the book
of the genealogy of Adam. In the day, God created
man, he made him in the likeness of God." Now, I'm not going to
read the whole chapter. But I do want you to know this. Chapter 5 covers 1,500
years, just this chapter. Chapters 1 through 11
cover about 2,000 years. And the rest of
the book of Genesis between 300 to 500 years. Just this chapter in
its genealogical records is 1,500 years. But the chapter is like
walking through a graveyard. It says, and he died, and he
died, and he died, and he died. It's over and over. It's repeated in this chapter. Verse 2, "He created
them male and female and blessed them and
called them mankind." The Hebrew word there
is He called them Adam. Isn't that interesting? Male and female, He didn't call
them the Adams's or the Addams family. But He calls them, collectively,
the singular Adam-- man. Translated mankind
in our version, or in a more politically
correct translation, humankind. But the Word is He called
them Adam on the day that they were created. Now, when God names them,
that's an indication that He has dominion over them. Naming them means God
has dominion in as much as God said to Adam, you
get to name all the animals. You're going to have
dominion over all the animals in the world. Over all of the creation,
you're the head. You're the crowning creation. But God names them indicating
his dominion over them. "And Adam," verse
3, "lived 130 years and begot a son in his own
likeness after his image and named him Seth." From this verse on, the
line of Cain is dropped. And the line of Seth is
focused on and picked up. Verse 5, "so all the days that
Adam lived were 930 years, and he died" Go
down to verse 25. "Methuselah lived 187
years and begot Lamech. After he begot Lamech,
Methuselah lived 782 years and had sons and daughters. All the days of
Methuselah were 969 years. And he died." People always ask this question. How is it possible for
people to live that long? Are these false numbers? Are these much, much,
much, much shorter years? So it's really a
normal lifespan. How on Earth could
they live that long? It is believed-- and I think
the best explanation is, before the flood, there was a
water canopy that surrounded the Earth, sort of
like a thermal blanket, a mist, that would produce
uniform temperatures on the Earth. There would be no
rain on the Earth, because the Earth was watered
not by rainfall the Bible says, but by a mist that came from it. And also there would be no
mass air movements, no wind. But with that canopy,
that thermal blanket, came the filtration of all the
ultraviolet rays of the sun or at least most of the
ones that would be harmful. It would produce a moderate
and healthful condition. Now, this is going to
drop off after the flood. You'll see it. The lifespan goes down. Because that water
canopy is broken up. Now, the word,
Methuselah-- everybody knows Methuselah is the
oldest dude in the Bible. But most people skip
over what his name means. It's a very interesting name. The name, Methuselah, literally
means, "when he is dead, it shall be sent." When he is dead,
it shall be sent. What's fascinating, if
you do the chronology, you discover that 969
years after Methuselah came on the scene was the
year the flood happened. Now, isn't that an
interesting prophecy? When he is dead,
it shall be sent. Now imagine being
Methuselah's parents. When he is dead,
it shall be sent. Methuselah has a cold. Oh, my goodness. And if the neighbors knew that
that little boy was a walking prophecy, are you kidding? We'll baby sit. We'll help out. We'll give him vitamins. We want to do everything we can
to keep Methuselah alive for as long as is possible. But one day he would die. And in the year that he died,
we believe, from the chronology, is when the flood came. Which takes us to the
third of the four events. And that is the
flood on the Earth. That's chapter 6 through 9. Verse 1, "it came
to pass when man began to multiply on
the face of the Earth and daughters were
born to them." Because people lived so
long, the long lifespans would cause a rapid
increase in population. Two scientists named John
Whitcomb and Henry Morris have figured that, if you
take the genealogical tables from Genesis, calculate
longevity that is provided for here, and the average
number of kids per family, at the end of 18
generations, you could have 774 million
people on the Earth. And their reckoning,
by this math, is, by the time of the
flood, there would be well over a billion people on Earth. So they began to multiply
on the face of the earth. What makes this
interesting is Jesus said, "as it was in the
days of Noah, so shall it be in the coming
of the son of man." Today, there are a
7.6 billion people. By the year 2150,
it is estimated, the high estimate is 28
billion people on this planet. We are multiplying on
the face of the Earth. Verse 5, "the Lord saw
the wickedness of man was great on the Earth
that every intent of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that
He made man on the Earth and He was grieved in His heart. And so the Lord said, 'I will
destroy man whom I have created from the face of the Earth, both
man and beast, creeping things, and birds of the air, for I am
sorry that I have made them.' But Noah found grace or favor
in the eyes of the Lord." I love the Living Bible. It says, "but Noah was
a pleasure to the Lord." Now, I deliberately
skipped a hot potato issue in this chapter. And that's the issue
of the sons of God and the daughters of men, the
Binet Elohim if some of you know that argument. I'm always asked,
what were they? Who were they? Were they demons? Were they sons of Seth? And there are books
written about that. I'm going to skip
over that for time and just say, listen, the big
picture is more important. That Satan so
corrupted the Earth that it reached into virtually
every part of society. That's how bad it was. And that is why God
judged the Earth. Verse 14, "make yourself
an ark of gopher wood." That's thought to be cypress
wood, very hard, very durable. "Make rooms in the ark. Cover it inside and
outside with pitch." Verse 17, "and behold, I
myself am bringing flood waters on the Earth to destroy,
from under heaven, all flesh, which is the breath of life. Everything that is on
the Earth shall die. But I will establish
my covenant with you. You will go into the
ark, you and your sons, your wives, your
son's wives with you. And of every living
thing of all flesh, you shall bring
two of every sort into the ark to keep
them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Genesis 7 verse 17, "now, the
flood was on the Earth 40 days. The waters increased
and lifted up the ark and it rose high
above the Earth." That's why I believe
it's a universal flood. "The waters prevailed and
greatly increased on the Earth. And the ark moved about on
the surface of the waters." Now, folks, this is a lot
more than just a lot of rain. It was rain from heaven. But also it says, "the
fountains of the deep," the subterranean vaults of
water all over the Earth that God had originally
made were broken up. And it was a great cataclysm
that filled the Earth. "The waters prevailed," verse
19, "exceedingly on the Earth. And all the high hills under the
whole of heaven were covered. The waters prevailed
15 cubits upward, and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved
on the Earth-- birds and cattle, beasts, every creeping
thing that creeps on the Earth and every man." So every man, every
woman, every creep died. All the creeps that creep. "And all in whose
nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that
was on the dry land, died." Now, let that verse sink in. Everybody died. This is a sober verse. This is the future of
all sinners destruction in a holocaust of judgment. You say, well, the flood
is never going to happen. You're right. There'll never be another
flood on the Earth. The next time, God will
judge the Earth though. "And it will be by
fire," Peter said. But it will happen. Chapter 8, "the flood stops." Here's what's interesting. There are 270 cultures out there
that have records of a flood. From Egypt to Babylonia to
Persia to Greece to the Hindu countries and Chinese cultures,
there are flood narratives. And they're strikingly similar
with their own variations. And that is because
they're all myths. But they all play off
the singular event that is true recorded in the
Bible, the universal flood. What's interesting is that
a significant number of them say that it was God judging the
Earth for its sinful behavior, its wickedness. Now, the ark, was 450 feet long,
75 feet wide, 45 feet tall, with a displacement
of 20,000 tons, or roughly the size
of the Titanic. It had three decks, which
would make the volume 1.5 million cubic feet. The capacity of this vessel
was equivalent to 522 railroad cars. Some estimate the
ark could accommodate 18,000 species of animals. And if you were to make
the total of animals on the ark, 72,000 creatures,
that's less than 60% of the total volume
of this boat. Amazing, isn't it? The flood subsided
after 150 days. Noah was on this boat
for a total of 371 days. I can't begin to
imagine the smell. In chapter 9, when
it's all said and done, God makes the covenant. The Noahic covenant, or
God's covenant with Noah, he says, you, your three
boys, Shem, Ham, Japheth, fill the Earth, multiply. And now, God adds
meat to their diet where previously they
were just vegetarian. Now, God commands them
to eat the animals as they populate the Earth. Also part of the covenant
is the protection of human life, which
includes capital punishment as a direct order from God. And now, we come to
the last section. And we'll close with this. Chapters 10 and 11, the fallout
from the rebellion of man. After the flood, a new
social order arises-- human government. That's not only a
new social order. But there's a new
physical order. The vapor canopy is removed,
that thermal blanket that I just talked about. And man's lifespan is
significantly shortened. Also some believe that
the atmospheric pressure is cut in half after the flood. And one of the reasons
is because there are pterodactyl
fossils on the Earth-- those flying dinosaurs. And by design, they couldn't fly
unless the atmospheric pressure were twice what it is today. Now, that's not a big deal,
because a lot of people contend they never
really flew much. They were sort of like
Roadrunner's, kind of ran a lot and then flew a little bit. Or a peacock-- flew a little
bit, then stayed on the ground most of the time. Don't know. Don't care. What happened after the flood? Noah's three sons--
now, watch this. He has three sons-- Shem, Ham, and Japheth. That's what this chapter
focuses on-- the next couple of chapters. They had a lot of kids. And chapter 10 is called
the table of nations. 70 nations come from
these three boys-- 26 from Shem, 30 from
Ham, and 14 from Japheth. Just look at verse 1. Now, this is the genealogy
of the sons of Noah-- Shem, Ham, Japheth. And sons were born to
them after the flood. Now, Japheth is highlighted
in verse 2 through 5. He was the Father of
the Indo-European races. People from Europe, people from
Iran, India, and Central Asia can trace their heritage
back to Japheth. Verses 6 to 20 are
the records of Ham. Ham is responsible for
the populations of Africa and the Middle East, including
Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, and the Canaanite civilizations
that inhabited Israel before they got there. Verses 21 through 31 is Shem. Shem produced the population
of a Syria and Syria as well as those in Asia Minor. Now, get this. The rest of the book of Genesis
focuses on the line of Shem. So one line, Cain is eliminated. Seth is focused upon. Now, the rest of the
book, one lineage, one genealogical record, one
people group is highlighted. Look at verse 21. I want you look at a single
word, a single name-- Eber. Do you see that in verse-- Eber? Look again, verse 24. "Arphaxad--" I just
had to say that word. Don't ever name your son that. "begot Shelah." That's a little better. "And Shelah begat Eber." Eber-- it is thought that
the word, Hebrew, comes from the word, or
the name, Eber, and that the original language,
this lineage of Eber spoke, was the language of Hebrew. This is the source of the
Semitic group called the Jews. Now, God said something. He said, fill the Earth, right? Be fruitful and fill the Earth. He said that to Adam. He said that to Noah. In chapter 11, they
decide not to spread out but to get together and
coalesce into a superstate. Look at just a couple
of verses and we close. "Now, the whole Earth had
one language and one speech. It came to pass, as they
journeyed from the east, they found a plain in the land
of Shinar and dwelt there." That's Mesopotamia or Iraq. Verse 4, "and they said,
'come let us build ourselves the city and a tower whose
top is in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves
lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the
whole Earth.'" Verse 7, "God responds, 'come let us go
down and confuse their language that they may not understand
one another's speech.'" Now, there are
separate languages, which divide them up,
which is what God wanted them to do in the first place. Fill the Earth. Spread out. Don't coalesce. So their ethnicities
and their language will cause them to coalesce
into different groups in different zones. So verse 8, "the Lord scattered
them abroad from there over the face of the Earth. And they ceased
building the city. Therefore, the name
is called Babel." That's where Babylon
will come from. "Because there,
the Lord confused the language of all the Earth. And from there, the Lord
scattered them abroad over the face of the Earth." The word, Babel, means
a gateway to God. So here is mankind
building this ziggurat, this tiered structure,
that's sort of like a ladder to heaven. Or if you will, in the
words of Robert Plant, they're trying to build
a stairway to heaven. They're trying to reach God and
have dominion themselves apart from God. As we close, and
now we are closing, the Bible can be summed up
besides one person and two events. You could say the whole Bible is
the choice between two cities. It's a tale of two cities. It's the city of God
versus the city of man. Or in biblical parlance,
Babylon versus Jerusalem. By the way, the two
cities named more than any other
cities in the Bible are Babylon and Jerusalem. So it's interesting
that the Bible will close exactly the same way. In Revelation, there
is Babylon the great that gets conquered
and, in its place, the new Jerusalem, which
comes out of Heaven from God. Which is your city? Which is your town? Where are you putting
down your roots and building your foundation? The capstone of this whole
section of Genesis 1 through 11 is chapter 3 verse 15
where God says to Satan, "I will put enmity
between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. And he will crush your head,
and you will bruise his heel." It's a promise of the Redeemer. It's the seed plot of
the rest of the Bible. God promised that, one day,
the messiah would come, the deliverer would come. And though he would
die and, in a sense, his heel would be
bruised, He would be crushing the authority, the
dominion, the power of Satan. Paradise lost will
be paradise regained. Don't blame Adam. God gives you the same choice-- life or death. Eternal life, eternal
death-- it's up to you. You choose. Father, we want to
thank You for the time that we've spent
together soaring over 11 chapters of
the book of Genesis, understanding the events
that this book speaks about-- at least in part. The formation of everything,
the fall of mankind, the flood that came
upon the Earth, and the fallout that happened
because of man's rebellion to God. But Lord, it all comes down
to our personal choice. And I pray we would
walk away with not only that understanding of the
Bible but the understanding of our choice and our need
to decide what city we're going to be a part of, what tree
we're going to go moved toward, what fruit we're going
to take for ourselves, and what we're going to
do with Jesus Christ. It's in his name we pray. Amen. We hope you enjoyed this message
from Skip Heitzig of Calvary church. For more resources,
visit calvarynm.church. Thank you for joining us for
this teaching from the Bible from 30,000 feet.
